Hiring a Contractor or Other Service Professional? Investigate First. Here’s How.

“That Must Be Interesting… I Bet I’d Be Good At it.”… The typical response to telling someone I worked as an investigator.

The consistency of that response led me to write my eBook, The Everyday Detective: Harness the Power of Information To Make Your Life Easier, Safer, and More Profitable.

I wrote it based upon the techniques I used during my 30+ years of working as an investigator. My specialty was building civil and criminal litigation cases for attorneys, but I believe that most people can learn, and then apply to their everyday life, the research skills and techniques that I used conducting investigations.

You can learn more about how you can use investigation techniques to protect yourself, your family, your money, your home, and even for those of you with your own service business, to improve your sales (more on that later) by clicking here.

Information is a powerful tool. One of the most powerful there is. Especially when it comes to helping you make decisions, such as which remodeling contractor you should NOT hire. And I believe that anyone, with some guidance, can learn how to develop information about most anything you’d need to know.

In this piece, I’m going to discuss the basic tools of investigation: what they are, how you can access that information, and what types of information you can learn from those tools when researching an individual or business, such as a remodeling contractor.

Remodeling contractors have the second highest level of consumer complaints as an industry, second only to used car sales. So it really makes sense for you to take the time to research the individual or business you are thinking about hiring. It can mean the difference between a project that goes well, and one that ends up in litigation.

And to help you out with this process I’ve created a Free PDF checklist guide that you can download using the form below.

The Remodeling Contractor Background Research Checklist: How to Research a Contractor Before You Hire One So You Can Protect Your Family, Your Finances, and Your Home.

So here’s some answers to some questions you might have:

Why Should I Spend My Time Researching a Contractor or Other Professional When I Can Just Read Online Reviews?

Online reviews certainly have their place. But, there is so much backstory to reviews that goes unseen, and that may have nothing to do with the quality of the services the person or business provides. So unrelated circumstances can drive negative or positive reviews. People can have friends post favorable reviews even when they have never hired the business or individuals. Or someone can flood the review website with negative reviews, that are based upon a personal grudge rather than the quality of the services.

The amount of time it takes for you to get a better idea about a service provider who you are thinking about hiring is minimal compared to the harm that can be caused by an incompetent or unscrupulous service provider.

A contractor could perform demolition for your project, and then jump onto other projects leaving your place a dangerous mess. Or you could pay a deposit to begin work, and then he never shows up, and makes you chase after him through the courts to try and get the money back.

What Are The Tools of Investigation?

There are two main sources of information that comprise the majority of investigative research. Both of these tools provide benefits to you in terms of the information you can learn.

Interviews. Speaking with individuals that possess information about an entity or individual so that you can learn that information and assess the quality of that information.
Documents. Specifically public records documents, which are maintained by city, county, state, and federal government agencies.
For visibly depicting a location or activity, photography (still and video), and diagrams also count as investigation tools.

What Can You Learn By Conducting an Interview?

• At its most basic, an interview is simply a conversation with another person that provides you with the opportunity to learn information from them. For example, if you have a chat with the director of a daycare center to learn about the operations of the center in preparation for sending your children there. Or in the case of a remodeling contractor, the interview could be with someone for whom he remodeled a bathroom. You might even conduct an interview with someone that had been involved in litigation with the individual or business you are researching.
• An interview can cover ANY subject matter. So it works for almost any type of research you want to conduct. Interviews are best done using open ended questions instead of the old Dragnet TV show Joe Friday approach, “Just the facts ma’am”, approach.
• Although for a very different purpose, being able to learn information through the interview process can benefit your sales skills if you operate a service business. Through conducting a good, detailed interview with a prospective client, you can learn what her goals are for working with you, and what her challenges and difficulties are that led her to contact you. You can use the interview process to determine if your services are the best fit for her, to devise a strategy for helping her achieve those goals, and to help you connect with her on a know, like, and trust level.

What Can You Learn From Public Records Documents?

• An incredible amount of information is available in document form. Just think about how many types of government agencies there are and what they handle. Civil and criminal court records, contractor licenses, building permits, business licenses, real estate records, auto accident reports, and in some circumstances, arrest records, and much, much more.
• In many cases the records that are available include not just the resulting document, but application information too. The application for a building permit, provides much more information than does the permit, so too can you learn much more information from an application for a contractor’s license than from the license itself.
• Depending upon the jurisdiction where the record is maintained, you may be able to search for, review, and download a copy of the record right from the comfort of your own home. In other situations you can request the records via mail or fax, or you can research, review, and request copies by going to the government agency office in person.

Assessing the Information to Help You Make Decisions

Once you have interviewed people with information relevant to the person or business you are researching, and located, reviewed, and obtained copies of documents that relate to your research, you will need to assess the information that you have collected.

Does the information you developed help you decide whether you can feel confident in hiring this individual or business, or does it lead you to other people to interview, and other documents to locate and review.

Remember that you are doing this due diligence process to collect information to help you make a decision. Information, as I mentioned earlier is a tool for decision making.

There are many, many sources of information that you can use to develop a fuller picture of a person or business you are thinking about hiring. In many ways, there are few limits to the type of information you can locate.

If you are considering hiring a remodeling contractor, download my free Remodeling Contractor Background Research Checklist, which gives you a step-by-step checklist of the different sources of information to review, and what types of interviews to conduct to help you feel more confident about the contractor you’ve hired.

And if you want to learn more about how to research daycare centers, assisted living facilities, physicians, and even how to investigate an auto accident click here to learn more about my eBook The Everyday Detective.